Ed. Note: The following are excerpts from articles relating to new surgery centers in Outpatient Surgery Magazine.
What you don't know can hurt you, especially if you are venturing into a project as expensive and risky as building a surgery facility. The typical physician has virtually no clue about the ins and outs of making a surgery facility a reality, according to professional surgery center developers. Fifty percent rated physicians' overall knowledge as "poor," while the other half rated it as "fair."
In the process of birthing most of the new surgical facilities in the country, the experts in surgical development firms develop special expertise in issues as diverse as the relative profitability of specialties to the biggest pitfalls facing new surgery facilities.
There is one significant factor that every physician who wants to build a surgery center should know about and it relates to the two top expenses of a new surgery center:
1. The building itself
2. The medical and surgical equipment.
Surprised by No. 2? Well, consider that a surgery center can house as many as 5,000 pieces of equipment (if you count surgical instruments) made by as many as 100 different manufacturers. Much of this equipment has 90- to 120-day manufacturing lead times, plus shipping, installation, training and biomedical certification time. Put another way: If you wait until the construction phase to start thinking about equipment, your project is sure to suffer.
Many times, architects and engineers must stop their work, awaiting detailed information so that they can design the building to accept the equipment that you've purchased. This not only slows the development process, but it also increases costs.
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